We live in an age where the phrase, ‘tell me something about you I don’t know’, has become redundant.

Want to find out what a person eats for breakfast? Check out their Facebook page. Any inclination to rifle through their career history? Log on to LinkedIn. Keen to discover what they consider to be their most beautiful body part? Go to Snapchat.

In an online world where we tweet and post everything that has ever happened to us, complete with accompanying imagery, we are quickly losing our mystery.

‘If you go on Facebook or Twitter, it’s really all about image management now – it’s not a place to have real authentic conversations,’ said James Sun, co-founder and chairman of Anomo, a new social media app where users are encouraged to reveal information at a less hectic pace.

‘Today’s social networks like Tinder or Facebook say that as soon as you sign up you have to tell the whole world about you. But we don’t think that’s how it works in the real world. You don’t go meet somebody and tell them everything about you on day one. You get to know them, you gradually reveal information.’

This is the basis for Anomo, which allows users to hide their identities from others until they are ready to tell them more. Instead of divulging everything about them after signing up to the app, users choose an avatar – or a ‘mask’ – and reveal personal info little by little through built-in ice-breaker games and chat messages.

Once users get comfortable with one another, they can ask for names, pictures, occupations and hobbies to be revealed. The idea is that anonymous interaction comes before revelation.

‘It’s a social network for dating, friendship or building networks,’ said Sun, 35, from Seattle, Washington. He said there is ‘a lot of flirting’ on the app, which launched in June.

Anomo has 100,000 users and is available worldwide on Android and Apple devices. Like Twitter, users have their own followers and have a limit on their messages – although at 540 characters there is a bit more to say. Its goal is to be the sophisticated masked ball to Facebook’s frat boy toga party.

Sun believes we are at our most open when wrapped in a warm blanket of anonymity – he mentions the following quote attributed to Oscar Wilde: ‘Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.’

He said communicating through an avatar allows for ‘a more authentic discussion’ and cited a recent example of an Anomo user who told followers he was struggling with depression and contemplating suicide, only for the app’s community to talk him out of it.

Although anonymity is part and parcel of Anomo, in the back end of the app users’ ages and gender are sorted through Facebook verification, in order to keep them chatting within their own age ranges – teenagers and people in their 30s and 40s are prevented from interacting, for example.

Sun said every conversation on the app is logged to protect users. When asked about the possibility of someone using the app to stalk another user or cause them physical harm, he said: ‘People have to use their judgment in the chats and where they are and who wants to meet up. Those things already happen on every platform. If I were to tell you we could solve that I would be lying. That’s something every company has to watch out for.’

He said one of Anomo’s major selling points is that it allows you to ‘check in’ at a location, see what other users are there and then potentially meet face-to-face without revealing your identity as with similar services through Facebook or Foursquare. ‘They fail because people realise their privacy and their safety is too high to let anyone in the world know where they are at that moment,’ said Sun.

There are other advantages to using an avatar.

‘If you go to Tinder and you put up a photo, unless you’re pretty attractive you’re not going to get any hits and that’s going to get very boring fast. On Anomo, you’re going to interact with people no matter what you look like. On a lot of dating social networks, a lot of the photos are fake.’

Sun put his own face in front of millions back in 2007, when he was a contestant on the US version of The Apprentice, hosted by Donald Trump. Sun finished second on the show and said it was a ‘breakthrough moment’ for someone who had ‘always been a shy kid’.

He added: ‘I’ve always wanted to build an app or an experience where it helps people to transition from being really shy when you’re socially awkward to being able to have better conversations.

‘It’s a worldwide social problem and can you use technology to solve that and make it easy, almost as a social lubricant, to help people find people?’

People who meet through Anomo and reveal their identities to one another can go to other online platforms to connect further, says Sun, but he added that most end up staying on the app for the conversations with other users.

He said: ‘It’s targeted towards anyone who wants to protect their privacy and still meet new people, which tends to skew towards people who are – I wouldn’t say “shy” is the right word – but who are more careful and introverted.’